Wynn Reiterates Bellagio Talk; RJ Calls It "Breaking"

Nearly three weeks ago, Steve Wynn told Jon Ralston of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Sun that he'd be willing to consider buying Mirage properties back from MGM Mirage if the price was right. This somehow bafflingly never found its way into the Best of the West-winning Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Well, not until just now. Evidently, when Wynn tells it to Bloomberg News, it's real to the R-J and worthy of being flashed atop their site as "Breaking News."


And all that because Wynn told Bloomberg: "I’d be interested, if at the right price, whether it’s Bellagio or Circus Circus."

See? That's how you know he's just funning them, needling his old friend Kirk. Wynn wouldn't take ownership of Circus Circus if he could have it for free plus a lifetime buffet pass. But thanks, R-J, for bringing us the latest just as soon as it happens. Or something.

MGM Mirage On Fate of Fountain Coins

It seems the Wynn Las Vegas response that the coins are in some cases not cleanable is somewhat backed up by this response from Alan Feldman, the spokesman for MGM Mirage, who finally came back to me with a comprehensive response to the question asked by podcast listener Naomi in Israel weeks ago about what happens to the coins tossed in Vegas fountains:

Steve:

Well, as you may have surmised by now, this was not an easy question to answer.

While most of the coins end up with charity, they have to go through a major cleaning process. Some are simply too dirty or damaged to salvage and are destroyed.

TI discards everything they clean out of their Pirate Cove area as the coins are simply too dirty to recover. The same for Circus Circus Adventuredome from the water rides they have.

The Mirage has in the past given the coins from the water feature near the people mover along the Strip to Shriner’s and Red Cross. They did not have an amount; they simply gave away the coins. My contact there said it was difficult to find an agency to take the coins because they had to be cleaned first.

Bellagio gives coins from their front feature to Habitat for Humanity, however our contact at HFH is saying the company that cleans the coins charges them 50%. As I recall a past conversation Bellagio, the Red Cross asked us to stop giving them the coins about a year ago, because the company they were using to process the donations, was going to raise their fee.

In 2007 approximately $22,000 was given to Make-a-Wish of Southern Nevada from the water features at New York New York.

Mandalay Bay and Luxor give theirs back to Voice, our company’s Foundation, where the monies are disbursed to charities throughout southern Nevada under the direction of a board made up entirely of employees. Last year, we deposited more than $33,000 into the Voice account from the fountains at these properties.

I know this isn’t a detailed accounting, but it’s what I was able to pull together in between calls on the fire and economy slipping into recession.

Any thoughts, folks?

Do The VegasTripping Folks Smoke CRACK?

WOW. So I was having a pretty difficult Sunday, having gotten the call that my uncle, struggling with pancreatic cancer in New York for 18 months, finally succumbed and not being able to do anything but focus on the flooding in Fernley, Nev., so I could file this piece for the Times and then fly back to Vegas to see "Love" at 7 pm for a story I'm working on.

Then, in the midst of all that, I start seeing emails and text messages congratulating me and/or asking if I'd noticed that the fine folks at VegasTripping.Com had done this:


And this, too:


That's NUTS. And a great, great honor. You can read about the Person of the Year thing and the Best Blog write-up at those links or check out all the Trippies winners here.

A few other Trippies outcome observations:

* Readers voted The Bellagio both best overall and worst "swanky place." Odd.

* There's a great deal of hate spewed from the Trippies editors at all things Venetian. Worst overall, worst "swanky joint," worst value, worst rooms, worst nightclub (Tao), most overrated, Then, randomly, the Venetian get editors' pick for best room service.

* On the other hand, there's a ton of hate from readers for Circus Circus, from worst grind joint to worse eats to worst carpet.

* The editors are uniformly down on Vegas gambling in general, giving a "they all suck" to table games, slots and casino. I may need to dig deeper on that in the Weekly.

* The Deuce got editors' pick for best place to get laid. But they don't 'splain!!!

* Congrats to Tim & Michelle at Five Hundy for taking the best podcast categories, VegasTodayandTomorrow.Com for reader-voted best site and RateVegas.Com's iPhone edition for editor-selected best site. The reader-selected LeavingLV.Net for best blog was an inspired choice and evidence that, even in this saturated age of Vegas media, there's still room for an innovation to fill a niche.

Congrats and thanks to all!

Vegas, Disabilities and the Hard of Hearing (Like Me!)

The Department of Justice today released information on a settlement with two casinos, the Mandalay Bay in Vegas and the Circus Circus in Mississippi, both now owned by MGM Mirage.

The settlements are exhaustive and the Vegas end of it involves Mandalay paying a $30,000 fine (whoop-de-doo) and enacting a long list of physical alterations to accommodate people in wheelchairs that undoubtedly will be a road map for compliance used by every other property in the city. Accessible rooms must have 32-inch-wide doorways, public bathrooms have to be however wide, they must provide accessible rooms for most every level of room style, etc. The Alain Ducasse eatery Mix was singled out as needing to provide a way for people in wheelchairs to get to upstairs dining areas. You can read it for yourself at this link until May 5.

So here's my complaint: What about those of us with disabilities not related to being unable to walk? In all of this, the only thing that touches on, say, people with hearing loss, is a requirement that they provide visual fire alarms in rooms.

I go to a lot of shows. I estimate fewer than a quarter of theaters on the Strip offer hearing assistive devices for their patrons. Every single cinema and Broadway theater does, but in Vegas, almost nobody bothers when they're spending tens of millions building them to include this convenience for their deaf and hard of hearing audience members. The theater that Rita Rudner was in -- and now Roseanne Barr is chilling in for a time -- at New York-New York was the first I ever saw that actually had signage for it, and I think the Cirque shows may have it which is ironic because you don't have to understand anybody's talking when you see one of them.

What's more, some that do have amplification devices don't advertise it. You have to ask. And then the ushers and box office personnel typically are baffled and don't know whether it's available or not. Nobody's training them. And I'm a young, assertive New Yorker/journalist; most of those looking for such things are elderly and not terribly comfortable even asking in the first place.

I particularly loved this response from an usher at the Gordie Brown show at the Venetian: "No, we don't have that, but it's really loud." It would be funny if I didn't hear this answer almost every time the answer turns out to be "no."

Don't tell me what's loud and what isn't. If I could hear like you, I wouldn't be asking, y'know?

MGM To Take Over The WORLD

Howard Stutz had a terrific scoop in the Review-Journal today that MGM Mirage has bought a bunch of land at Sahara and the Strip that, along with its Circus Circus property, gives it 100 contiguous acres. The implications are enormous -- that's 24 more acres than they have at CityCenter -- and will be hashed out by many including me in coming years. Sadly, though, MGM Mirage president Jim Murren says the plan does NOT include blowing up the monstrosity that is Circus Circus. He did give Stutz this peculiar comment:

"We're going to put some money into it and enhance and expand it over time. Circus Circus will be a gateway to our new development, similar to what Monte Carlo is to Project CityCenter."

This is an odd statement. Did anyone until Murren ever suggest that Monte Carlo, one of the most forgotten casino-resorts in the MGM family, was a gateway to CityCenter? Just look at how is sits off to the side in this picture of the CityCenter model. It's so sad and lonely, neglected as it has been its entire existence. Gateway? More like bastard step-child.

Prediction: When they get down to the guts of whatever plan they have for all that property, Circus Circus will be condemned to its fitting erasure from this earth. They're certainly not going to be able to attract architects like Liebskind and Jahn to offer up stunning designs for buildings to stand alongside a demented clown holding a bitten lollipop.

Miles and I kicked that around and more on tonight's episode of The Strip. We also had a camera crew from RawVegas.tv working on a piece on us to post sometime next week! Take a listen or right-click here to save the show to your computer to hear later.

I stand corrected or bu hao

A few weeks ago in this space, I wondered why Las Vegas casinos don't have foreign-language mirror sites. I had noticed shortly thereafter that the Bellagio does, in fact, have Chinese, Japanese and Spanish mirror sites. See the screenshot to your right.

Then it was pointed out to me in an email from Jenn Michaels, vice president of corporate relations for MGM Mirage, that two other MGM Mirage properties also have Spanish language sites -- Circus Circus and Treasure Island. I honestly didn't even look at those sites because they're not hotels I would associate with international travel and at least with the TI, you have to really look carefully to find the link. But Michaels also noted that by the end of the year, MGM Grand and Luxor also will have Spanish-language mirror sites. Wroth she: "This is an evolving area for us. Historically, international business has represented a small percentage of business to Las Vegas and to our properties. That number is certainly growing and as it does we respond."

I asked her what's taken so long given all the marketing efforts in Asia, and this was her answer: "To be honest, it’s just a matter of us catching up to the need. We’ve gone, in 7 years, from being a company with 2 properties to one with 22 properties, and we’re trying to manage that process. We know we have a lot of work to do on this front, and we look forward to getting it all done as we move forward."

Meanwhile, I also picked on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for failing in this regard. It is true that LVCVA.Com does not have any foreign-language mirror sites, but VisitLasVegas.Com, which I discovered the other day when Gregory sent me checking out the Vegas Visionary, does have links for Spanish and Chinese.

Still, where's Harrah's, Wynn and especially the Venetian on all of this?

And on a more arcane point (to Western readers), one of my Chinese friends reminded me that the title of the first post on this matter was incorrect. "Bu Yao" means "don't want." I meant to say "don't have" which would've been "mei you." Dui buqi.